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Apple COO Tim Cook came out fighting when asked about competing tablets during the Apple earnings call yesterday, calling them "big," "heavy," "expensive," and "bizarre." The company's acting head made it clear that he shared the hard-driving confidence of founder Steve Jobs when he said that "there's not much out there" in terms of competition. Motorola spinoff Motorola Mobility and Research In Motion showed off new tablets at the Consumer Electronics Show that are expected to go on sale sometime in late March. But in terms of current competition, Cook said that there are only two alternatives to the iPad: Windows and Android tablets. And he minced no words in dissing both competitors.

When it comes to Windows tablets, he dismissed them as "big, heavy and expensive" devices with "very weak battery life" which "require a keyboard or stylus as an input device." He expressed his point of view that "customers are frankly not interested in them," which is reasonable given the fact that Windows tablets have been available for ten years and never caught on. Even market leader HP is having a hard time getting its Slate tablet to market, apparently focusing more on the webOS platform it bought from Palm.

Cook was no less disparaging of Android. Pointing out the fact that even Google has acknowledged that currently-shipping versions of Android were designed for smartphones, he said the size of Android tablets on the market is not "one that would provide what we feel is a real tablet experience." The result, he said was "a scaled-up smartphone, which is a bizarre product in our view." Cook referred to next-generation Android Honeycomb tablets, such as those demonstrated at CES this year, as "vapor," saying that Apple would "assess them as they come out."

However, he added, Apple was "not sitting still," he said, and has a "huge first mover advantage" by being first out of the starting gate in a big way with tablets, with - according to some estimates - 20 million iPads in users' hands before the first Honeycomb tablet hits the market. "So," he concluded, "we're very, very confident with entering into a fight with anyone."